"No Entry. Trespassers Will Be Executed."
XLR8's visor reflected the warning sign as he skidded to a stop before the door. His clawed feet left faint scorch marks on the polished floor, evidence of the ridiculous speeds he'd been maintaining throughout this infiltration.
No hesitation. No second thoughts.
He extended one scissor-like claw and pushed the door inward.
Unlocked. The Forever Knights trusted their security systems so completely that they hadn't bothered with physical locks on their restricted areas. Their arrogance would be their undoing.
The door swung open without resistance.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the third floor, Gwen had found her own restricted door bearing an identical warning. Unlike her cousin, she paused to read the sign and felt a chill run down her spine.
Trespassers will be executed.
The threat was absurd in its boldness, but something about the phrasing nagged at her. It felt almost like reverse psychology, as if the knights were advertising that something important lay beyond. In old Chinese stories, they called this "three hundred taels of silver buried here", a sign so obviously meant to deflect attention that it accomplished the opposite.
She pushed through anyway.
"Ben!"
Gwen's heart soared as she spotted her cousin strapped to what looked like an operating table in the center of the sterile room. Harsh white light from surgical lamps bore down on the arc reactor embedded in his chest. A scientist in a Forever Knight lab coat stood beside him, holding a circular bone saw that whined with barely contained menace.
"Gwen!" Ben's eyes went wide with relief. His shirt had been removed, and metal restraints pinned his arms and legs to the table. "Oh thank God, you have no idea how glad I am to see you!"
"Get away from him!" The scientist lunged at Gwen, revving the bone saw as he charged.
Gwen didn't even flinch. The Charm of Luck pulsed once at her throat, and the scientist's foot caught on absolutely nothing. His momentum carried him face-first into a metal equipment cart, which toppled and sent him crashing to the floor in a heap of scattered surgical instruments.
He didn't get back up.
"Ben, we don't have time to explain everything." Gwen rushed to his side and began working on the restraints. "The whole building's in chaos. Asher's drawing the knights away, but we need to move, now."
"Wait, Asher's here too? What about Grandpa?"
"Long story. Transform the second you're free. I'll use the charm to guide us out."
XLR8 had expected to find a prisoner.
Instead, he found paradise.
The room beyond the restricted door wasn't a cell or a torture chamber. It was a warehouse, a cathedral of alien technology that stretched back into shadows. Display cases lined every wall, each one containing components, devices, or biological specimens that glowed with otherworldly luminescence. High-grade power cores hummed behind reinforced glass. Mechanical parts of clearly extraterrestrial origin hung suspended in preservation fields.
This was where the Forever Knights kept their most advanced acquisitions. Their trophy room. Their armory of impossible things.
"Holy..."
XLR8's green eyes swept across the collection, taking in artifacts that would have made the Plumbers' own archives look like a yard sale. Some of these pieces he recognized from the Omnitrix's database, technology from species scattered across a dozen galaxies. Others were completely foreign, their functions impossible to guess.
His first instinct was to grab everything he could carry.
No. Focus.
He shook his head, forcing the temptation down. The Forever Knights had attacked his family. They'd kidnapped Ben. They were holding his cousin somewhere in this building, and every second XLR8 spent drooling over alien gadgets was a second Ben remained in danger.
"I can come back for this stuff later," he muttered. "First priority is finding Ben."
Besides, a more practical voice added, anything I take from the people who tried to kill us isn't stealing. It's reparations.
XLR8 circled the warehouse at super-speed, checking every corner and shadow. Nothing. No prisoners, no secret doors, just row after row of impossible treasures gathering dust. Whoever had arranged this collection clearly prioritized acquisition over utilization, the Forever Knights were hoarders, not innovators.
He found nothing useful and retreated to the corridor, moving on to the next room.
The second door led to storage, mundane supplies, nothing more. The third contained what looked like a communications hub, currently unmanned. The fourth and fifth were empty offices.
Seven rooms searched. Zero signs of Ben.
Where the hell are they keeping him?
Down in the courtyard, the Forever Knights had finally pieced together what happened.
A patrol stood at the base of the main building, staring up at the exterior wall. Deep footprints marked the stone surface, climbing vertically from the ground floor all the way to a shattered window on the third floor.
"He ran up the wall," one knight breathed. "Like some kind of... spider."
"Not a spider." The patrol leader's voice was grim. "A velociraptor. That blue creature from the earlier encounter, it can run on any surface."
The window three stories up gaped like a wound, its reinforced glass reduced to glittering fragments. Upon closer inspection, they could see hairline fractures spreading from the impact point, the creature hadn't just broken through, it had punched through at such velocity that the structural stress had propagated outward like ripples in water.
"We've been chasing shadows this whole time." A younger knight kicked the wall in frustration. "While we were running around the grounds like idiots, he was already inside!"
"This alien technology is completely different from anything in our database." The patrol leader's voice carried a note of genuine unease. "The intelligence division spent months analyzing the beast-form's capabilities, heat signatures, attack patterns, weaknesses. But this thing is completely different. Different powers, different tactics. How many forms does that watch even have?"
The question hung in the air, unanswered.
"Spread out," the leader ordered. "We sweep every inch of the third floor. No blind spots. If that creature is hiding somewhere, we'll find it, and this time, we'll be ready."
The knights dispersed with renewed purpose, their earlier confusion crystallizing into cold determination. They moved in coordinated pairs now, covering each other's sight lines as they climbed the stairs toward the upper floors.
XLR8 heard them coming.
His Kineceleran hearing, far sharper than any human's, picked up the distant clatter of armored boots on stone. Multiple sets, moving with military precision. They were sweeping upward, systematically clearing each floor.
He glanced at the Omnitrix symbol on his chest. The green hourglass icon pulsed with an ominous rhythm.
The transformation's about to time out.
He'd been pushing XLR8's limits ever since entering the building. Between the high-speed combat, the wall-running, and the constant sprinting through corridors, he'd burned through the Omnitrix's charge faster than usual. Any moment now, that green flash would hit, and he'd be back to being an ordinary ten-year-old boy.
An ordinary ten-year-old boy surrounded by trained knights who wanted to dissect him.
"If they catch me while I'm reverting, it's over." XLR8 paced back and forth, his tail twitching with agitation. "I need somewhere to hide until the Omnitrix recharges. Somewhere they won't think to look."
His gaze drifted to the door at the end of the corridor.
The warehouse.
"No Entry. Trespassers Will Be Executed."
The most dangerous place... was often the safest.
That warning sign wasn't just meant for intruders like him. It was meant for the Forever Knights' own rank-and-file soldiers. The Eternal Knight clearly didn't trust his subordinates around valuable alien technology. Which meant...
Most of them wouldn't dare enter even during a search.
"Perfect."
XLR8 pushed through the door and slipped back into the warehouse of stolen wonders. His claws clicked against the floor as he navigated between display cases, searching for a suitable hiding spot.
There, a corner partially obscured by a tall cabinet. He pressed himself into the shadow, his blue-and-black body blending with the darkness. From here, he could see the door while remaining invisible to anyone who entered.
Now he just had to wait for the Omnitrix to,
BEEP!
The transformation ended at the worst possible moment.
Green light flashed outward, temporarily illuminating the warehouse like a lightning strike. Asher felt his body shift, his enhanced senses dulling as human limitations reasserted themselves. The familiar weight of flesh and bone replaced the airy speed of Kineceleran physiology.
But that wasn't the problem.
The problem was what the green flash had touched.
Somewhere in the warehouse, an alien device chirped in response to the Omnitrix's energy signature. The sound was brief, a sharp electronic ping, but in the silence of the building, it might as well have been a thunderclap.
The doors muffled external sounds effectively. Asher could barely hear anything from the corridor beyond.
But "barely" wasn't "not at all."
Voices filtered through the heavy wood. Excited voices. Triumphant voices.
"Someone's in there! I heard something activate!"
"That's the restricted warehouse, no one's supposed to be inside!"
"It must be the kid! The transformation must have timed out!"
"The Eternal Knight ordered us not to enter, but, "
"Just send two men in to confirm. We're not there to fight, just to verify his position. Once we know where he is, we can seal every exit and wait him out."
Asher's blood ran cold.
Through the tiny gap between door and frame, he could see shadows accumulating. Knights were converging from both ends of the corridor, blocking every possible escape route. He heard more footsteps coming from below, reinforcements climbing the stairs, cutting off the building's lower floors.
They had him surrounded.
Think. THINK.
His hand instinctively went to the Omnitrix, but the hourglass was dark. Recharging. Useless.
Asher's gaze swept across the warehouse, across the countless devices, artifacts, and weapons the Forever Knights had accumulated over years of collecting. He was standing in one of the most advanced armories on Earth, surrounded by technology that could level buildings or reshape reality.
If those knights came through that door...
If it came down to a fight...
Then he'd grab every piece of alien tech he could reach and show these medieval cosplayers exactly what happened when they threatened his family.
If I'm going down, I'm taking as many of them with me as possible. Let's see how the Eternal Knight likes it when his precious collection goes up in flames.
A cold resolve settled over Asher's features. He pressed himself deeper into the corner, one hand already reaching toward the nearest display case.
The doorknob began to turn.